Swire Properties successfully bids the 981 King's Road site

Swire Properties announced today (Wednesday, 17 May 2000) that a contract was signed with the Haking Wong family to purchase the No. 981 King's Road land site for $435 million. The price reflects the marriage value that Swire will achieve by including this site within its Island East investment portfolio.

The No. 981 King's Road site covers an area of 16,000 sq ft. Directly linked to TaiKoo Place, it will become an important enhancement to the Island East Matrix of 11 buildings, owned and managed by Swire Properties. The company intends to construct a state-of-the-art, hi-tech Grade A office building with a total floor area of 270,000 sq ft over 32 floors. Restaurant space will also be provided. The project, solely developed by Swire Properties, is expected to be completed in the first half of 2003.

Mr Stephan G. Spurr, Director & General Manager of Swire Properties, said: "The addition of the 981 King's Road site is a natural territorial expansion of our portfolio in Island East. The new building will be equipped with the most advanced IT and telecommunications infrastructure, as well as providing a wide array of support services to help the tenants exploit their core competencies."

Strategically located between the MTR interchange at Quarry Bay and the Tai Koo Station, Island East is Hong Kong's largest integrated office portfolio offering cutting-edge design, hyper-connectivity, a private satellite farm and first class housing for companies as diverse as Bank of America, Fuji Bank, Hewlett-Packard, Northern Telecom, Reuters and Time Warner. Lately, it has become a hub for IT and telecommunication companies, amongst whom Level 3, Sunday, IBM, Nokia, Ericsson, Compaq and Microsoft are prominent members of the office tenant base.

Swire Properties has a long-term commitment to Island East, the territory's fastest growing business district, and is already the prefered location for more than 300 multi-national and local companies.

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